The fifth out of thirteen children, Waters was born 1938 in Kinloch, Missouri,[6] to Remus and Velma Lee Carr Moore. She graduated from Vashon High School in St. Louis, and moved with her family to Los Angeles, California, in 1961. She worked in a garment factory and as a telephone operator before being hired as an assistant teacher with the Head Start program at Watts in 1966. She later enrolled at Los Angeles State College (now California State University, Los Angeles), and graduated with a sociology degree in 1970.

Waters represented a large part of south-central Los Angeles in Congress and gained national attention in 1992 “when she helped deliver relief supplies in Watts and demanded the resumption of vital services”[9] as the area “caught the nation’s attention” with the Rodney King verdict, and the Los Angeles riots of 1992 that followed.[10] Waters described the riots as a rebellion, saying “If you call it a riot it sounds like it was just a bunch of crazy people who went out and did bad things for no reason. I maintain it was somewhat understandable, if not acceptable.”[11]

On July 29, 1994 Waters was challenged for making inappropriate remarks during a one-minute speech. She then ignored the Chair’s request to suspend speaking until the point of order was settled. Rep. Robert Walker (R-PA) rose and called out “get the Mace,” to restore order. The Chair kept pounding the gavel and finally stated, “the Chair is about to direct the Sgt-at-Arms to present the Mace!” Waters then suspended, and the Chair was able to rule on the point of order without having to resort to the Mace.[12][13] She was chair of the Congressional Black Caucus from 1997-98.

In 2006 Waters was involved in the debate over King Drew Medical Center. She criticized media coverage of the hospital and in 2006 Waters asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deny a waiver of the crossownership ban, and hence license renewal for KTLA-TV, a station The Los Angeles Times owned. She said that “The Los Angeles Times has had an inordinate effect on public opinion and has used it to harm the local community in specific instances.” She requested that the FCC force the paper to either sell its station or risk losing that station’s broadcast rights.[14] According to Broadcasting & Cable, the challenges raised “the specter of costly legal battles to defend station holdings…. At a minimum, defending against one would cost tens of thousands of dollars in lawyers’ fees and probably delay license renewal about three months.”[15] Waters’ petition was ultimately unsuccessful; the station’s license next expires in 2014.[16]

In 2010 Waters came under investigation for ethics violations and was accused by a House panel of at least one ethics violation related to her efforts to help OneUnited Bank, where her husband had been a director and in which he had stock holdings, receive federal aid. She said she planned to fight the charges in a trial.[22]

With the announcement of Barney Frank’s (D-Massachusetts) retirement in 2012, Waters is expected to become the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee.[23]

In 2001, she called Richard Riordan, L.A. mayor, a “plantation owner”. During the L.A. riots in 1992, Waters described the violence as a “spontaneous reaction to injustice”. She held “economic, social, cultural, and political” factors responsible and that the L.A. riots should rightly be called a “rebellion” or “insurrection.” [24]

Waters co-sponsored Rep. John Conyers‘ bill calling for reparations for slavery to be paid to black Americans.[25]

In September 2011, Waters called for the implementation of a federal “jobs program of a trillion dollars or more.” “We’ve got to put Americans to work”, she said. “That’s the only way to revitalize this economy. When people work they earn money, they spend that money, and that’s what gets the economy up and going.”

Following a 1996 San Jose Mercury article alleging the complicity of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Los Angeles crack epidemic of the 1980s, Waters called for an investigation. Waters questioned whether “U.S.-government paid or organized operatives smuggled, transported and sold it to American citizens.”[30] The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it had failed to find any evidence to support the original story.[31]The Los Angeles Times also concluded after its own extensive investigation that the allegations were not supported by evidence.[32] The author of the original story, Gary Webb, was eventually transferred to a different beat and removed from investigative reporting, before his death in 2004.[33] Following these post-publication investigations, Waters read into the Congressional Record a memorandum of understanding in which former President Ronald Reagan‘s CIA director rejected any duty by the CIA to report illegal narcotics trafficking to the Department of Justice.[34][35] Undeterred, Waters told the Los Angeles Times in 1997: “It doesn’t matter whether the CIA delivered the kilo of cocaine themselves or turned their back on it to let somebody else do it. They’re guilty just the same.” The same CIA inspector general then released a second volume to this report, wherein his investigative team admitted that CIA assets traded in cocaine and crack, and that the CIA had pressured Department of Justice agencies (such as the DEA and FBI) to drop or suspend their own drug-related investigations of such assets.

Waters voted against the Iraq War Resolution, the 2002 resolution that funded and granted Congressional approval to possible military action against the regime of Saddam Hussein.[36] She has remained a consistent critic of the subsequent war and has supported an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq. Waters asserted in 2007 that President George W. Bush was trying to “set [Congress] up” by continually requesting funds for an “occupation” that is “draining” the country of capital, soldier’s lives, and other resources. In particular, she argued that the very economic resources being “wasted” in Iraq were those that might provide universal health care or fully fund President Bush’s own “No Child Left Behind” education bill. Additionally, Waters, representing a congressional district whose median income falls far below the national average, argued that patriotism alone had not been the sole driving force for those U.S. service personnel serving in Iraq. Rather, “many of them needed jobs, they needed resources, they needed money, so they’re there.”[37] In a subsequent floor speech, Waters told her colleagues that Congress, lacking the votes to override the “inevitable Bush veto on any Iraq-related legislation”, needed to “better [challenge] the administration’s false rhetoric about the Iraq war” and “educate our constituents [about] the connection between the problems in Pakistan, Turkey, and Iran with the problems we have created in Iraq.”[38] A few months prior to these speeches Waters became a cosponsor of the House resolution to impeach Vice PresidentDick Cheney for making allegedly “false statements” about the war.[39]

In August 2008, Waters introduced HR 6796, or the “Stop Very Unscrupulous Loan Transfers from Underprivileged countries from Rich Exploitive Funds Act”, also known as the Stop VULTURE Funds Act. This would limit the ability of investors in sovereign debt to use U.S. courts to enforce those instruments against a defaulting country. The bill died in committee.[40]

Waters has been very critical of the Tea Party Movement. On August 20, 2011 while at a town hall discussing some of the displeasure that supporters of President Obama have had with the Congressional Black Caucus not supporting the president Waters stated, “This is a tough game. You can’t be intimidated. You can’t be frightened. And as far as I’m concerned, the ‘tea party’ can go straight to Hell . . . and I intend to help them get there.” [42][43]

According to Chuck Neubauer and Ted Rohrlich writing in the LA Times in 2004, Maxine Waters’ relatives had made more than $1 million during the preceding eight years by doing business with companies, candidates and causes that Waters had helped. They claimed she and her husband helped a company get government bond business, and her daughter Karen Waters and son Edward Waters have profited from her connections. Waters replied that “They do their business and I do mine.”[44]